Thanks to an analysis carried out by artificial intelligence, it would have been discovered that a work that was considered a copy of a picture of Michelangelo Caravaggio, is actually original authorship of the great baroque artist of the seventeenth century. The famous auction house Sotheby´sy the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had previously treated this version of “The lute dressing table” as if it were only an imitation of the original. However, the test with AI carried out by the Swiss company Art Recognitiontogether with the University of Liverpool, it granted 85.7% probability that it is from the former Italian artist. Carina Popovici, the director of the company who collaborated with the process said that “all value above 80% is very high.”
The history of the painting
For 1597 Caravaggio was a poor artist who lived in the streets of Rome until a cardinal, Francesco María del Montehe provided him with a domicile and food becoming his patron. Among the paintings he painted at that time is the axis of the current finding. That work, from the Mount’s collection, was sold in 1620 and was acquired by Antonio Barberinianother cardinal future.
The lute dressing table It had been bought in the 18th century by the third Duke of the Beaufort family, of the Badminton House houselocated in Gloudeshire, England. Only in 1969 the work was commercialized again when Sotheby´s sold it as Copy “According to Caravaggio” For only 750 pounds ($ 1800 at today’s price, only 900 at that time), and in 2001 it auctioned it as “Círcol of the Caravage” -That is, the work of his surroundings but not confirmed from him-for 71000 pounds (99 thousand dollars of the time, and approximately 180 thousand dollars currently).
Clovis Whitfieldan art historian and British gallery owner, was the Buyer of the beginning of this century. At that time he assured that the work “corresponded exactly” with what Giovanni Baglionie, the Biographer of Caravaggio, in 1642, emphasized, emphasis on “carefully observed details, such as the reflection of dew drops in the flowers“.
Fight for originality
There is at least 3 versions of The lute dressmaker. One of them is the Heritage Museum of St. PetersburgRussia. While the last one integrates the Wildenstein Collection after being exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York between 1990 and 2013 and is known because Who plays the lute is a woman.
In that 1990 the head of European paintings of the New York museum, Keith Christiansen, valued the current version of Wildenstein as the original and described that of Badminton, which then arrived at Whitfield, as the copy. In fact in a letter he snapped at Alfred Bader (an old buyer of that version) that “no one – and certainly no modern scholar – has ever considered or would ever consider the idea that his picture could be painted by Caravaggio.” After years Whitfield replied that “the outcome of the AI knocks down Mr. Christiansen”.
In contrast to the same study that certifies as true to that of Badminton and Whitfield, Popovici stressed that the painting of the Wildenstein collection is a copy. “Our AI threw a negative result,” he said. In the same tune David von Edwards, president of the Larecrow Society, said that in that version of the work there were Several defects that were neither in Badminton nor in the Hermitage.
The post finding
The art world plans various ways to tell the world that found a Caravaggio original. For example, Whitfield and Popovici will make a podcast which premiered this Saturday and will be presented by Noah Charneyan American art historian, who prepares a Academic article on The lute dressing table. Geraldine Normanhighlighted in the art market, it will tell the history of the painting in through a documentary.
Anyway, one of the best ways to tell it is to continue exposing, and that seems to be the idea of its current holder. Whitfield intends that the work be exhibited in a public collection and the National Gallery English, which has just obtained an investment of 375 million pounds (450 million dollars), would be positioned as the most likely of its future destinations.
